‘Sweeney Todd,’ ‘All the Fine Boys,’ Wakey, Wakey’ — theater review

Fresh from a piping hot run in a London pie shop, this take on Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's gory, glorious masterwork recreates the same setting here. A pre-show pot pie is available, if you're peckish (chicken or vegetarian, no human flesh). The show is intimate, inventive and as in-your-face as it gets. As actors climb and perch atop tables and ignore rules of personal space, even my bald head became a prop. Reprising lead roles, Jeremy Secomb brings unblinking intensity as the titular throat-slitting barber, while Siobhan McCarthy is deftly daft as the baker who grinds victims into meat pies. Amid the atmosphere, narrative clarity can come out underbaked. Who's that? Wasn't the oven over there? And in a musical about justice, the singing doesn't always do that to the majestic score.

It's the one where Little Miss Sunshine loses her virginity while eating a slice of pizza. If this contrived play, written and directed by Erica Schmidt and presented by the New Group, is remembered for anything, it'll be that creepy doozy of a scene. That's not nothing, but still. In 1980s South Carolina, 14-year-olds Jenny (Abigail Breslin, of "Little Miss Sunshine") and Emily (Isabelle Fuhrman, of "Orphan") obsess about horror flicks and dudes. So it's not much of a surprise when the girls' encounters with guys (Joe Tippett and Alex Wolff) bring varying shades of horror. Like the script, acting rarely rings true in a work that can't pick a point of view — satire, dark comedy, cautionary drama, Lifetime tale? Who knows. Pizzas with the works? Sure. Plays, not so much.

Death becomes Will Eno, writer and director of this odd but gently urgent play that follows the final hour-and-change of one man's life. "Is it now?," asks Guy. "I thought I had more time." Who can't relate? Elsewhere Guy talk tends to be elliptical, cryptic and trails off into dead ends. No matter. Michael Emerson ("Lost") plays the role with a magnetic open-hearted humor, so we stay connected even when the going gets curious. And it does. Screeching animals video? Bubbles? Huh? In the end, Guy takes stock and shares a little advice. "Take care of each other," he says. Playing an aide, January LaVoy arrives late to do that. We should be so lucky as to have someone who radiates as much warmth as this actress does when time's up.